


Blanket Nest

by Wizardinpyjamas



Series: 30 Day Writing Prompts - November 2019 [11]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Cas and Dean get a Cat, Cas wants to build a nest, Cat, Cute, Dean has a meltdown over catfood, Fluff, M/M, POV Sam Winchester, Pet, i guess?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-15
Updated: 2019-11-15
Packaged: 2021-01-31 09:54:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21444307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wizardinpyjamas/pseuds/Wizardinpyjamas
Summary: He’s thirty seven years old, standing in the middle of a superstore watching his older brother meltdown over the fact that his ex-angel boyfriend decided they should adopt a cat
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester, Sam Winchester & Castiel, Sam Winchester & Dean Winchester
Series: 30 Day Writing Prompts - November 2019 [11]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1537129
Comments: 10
Kudos: 121





	Blanket Nest

**Author's Note:**

> Doing this - [November 2019 Writing Prompts](https://hvnteddean.tumblr.com/tagged/patient-prompts/chrono/)  
Day 11 - Blanket Nest
> 
> I might get things wrong here, I know nothing about cats.

Sam watches with an amused smile as Dean slowly loses his mind in the middle of target on a Tuesday afternoon. He doesn’t know how he got roped into this shopping trip, but he’s here now and he may as well enjoy himself. Sam is currently standing off to one side in the pet aisle, his back to the dog food, arms crossed across his chest. 

Dean stands a little in front of him, hands on his hips. Distressed and disheveled doesn’t even begin to explain the state that Dean is in; Sam has never seen his brother act in this way before, and it’s not something he’s going to let Dean forget in a long time. 

He can hear Dean muttering under his breath that sounds a bit like “Why couldn’t it have been vampires?” but Sam can’t be sure.

“It’s just a cat, Dean,” Sam says, but the look Dean gives him, eyes wide and wild, as his head whips around shuts him up immediately. 

Dean turns back to look at the wide array of cat food in front of him. He flicks his head from side to side, taking in every tin of meat on offer.

“There are so many options, Sammy,” Dean says. His voice is hollow and distant and Sam doesn’t remember him ever sounding more lost. “What do I choose? What if the cat doesn’t like it and then I’m stuck with thirty tins of sardines? What then, Sam?”

“Why don’t you just pick a few different one?” Sam suggests, shrugging slightly. 

“But what if we run out? We can’t just let it starve, Sam.” 

“So ask Cas, it was his idea to get a cat anyway, just let him make the decision.”

Dean exhales a small laugh. “You think he’ll be able to make a decision? We’ll walk away with the entire store. No Sam. I have to do this.” Dean says it with so much sincerity Sam almost thinks he’s dreaming. This can’t be real. This can’t be his life. 

He’s thirty-seven years old, standing in the middle of a superstore watching his older brother meltdown over the fact that his ex-angel boyfriend decided they should adopt a cat. Sam wishes he could say he’s been through weirder, and to most people this would be pretty normal, but Sam can’t help but feel like his life has just reached a new level of bizarre. 

“Where is that son-of-a-bitch, anyway?” Dean grumbles.

_ Wow _ , Sam thinks,  _ Dean really is not handling this well _ . 

“Screw this,” Dean says and grabs a thirty-two pack of ‘Seafood Fancy Feast’ and a small bag of something called ‘Meow Mix’ and stalks back to the checkouts, shoulders hunched. 

Sam sees Cas over at check out number three and he nods Dean in the right direction. 

Cas already has most of the supplies he’d picked out packed into bags and he starts loading them into Sam and Dean’s arms as soon as the food is placed on the conveyor belt. Sam doesn’t know what Cas has bought, but it fills up the Impala to the brim, almost to the point of overflowing.

Sam suddenly sees an image of Cas and Dean a few years down the line, shopping in the same stressful, yet exciting way, but this time not for a cat but for a child.

He can see Cas now, buying everything and anything that a baby might need, hundreds of different kinds of outfits that an infant would definitely not need just in case. He would go overboard, but Dean would let him and Sam knows that Dean would be secretly grateful that Cas isn’t embarrassed to show how much he cares for these tender things so that Dean gets to care too.

Finally the last of the bags have been dumped on the long table in the bunker, and Sam collapses into the nearest chair. Who’d have thought shopping could be so exhausting. 

He watches his brother and his best friend unpack, hands leaving lingering touches as they pass each other various items, small tender smiles shared in moments of privacy. Sam has always been the one person who’s known that Dean has a softer side, but to see that applied to somebody else leaves Sam feeling a little taken aback. He imagines this is how others might feel when they see Dean drop his macho act and it warms Sam’s heart. 

He heads to the kitchen to grab a couple of beers, and the small smile he’s been wearing doesn’t leave his face when he returns.

Until he hears arguing.

_ Oh great, here they go again _ . He rolls his eyes. 

“What were you thinking?” Dean is saying, his arms flapping dramatically to his sides. 

“The cat will need to be comfortable Dean.”   
“It will have a bed,” Dean points out.

“It needs to be emotionally comfortable as well. We’re taking it away from it’s home-,”

“It’s a shelter, Cas, we’re doing it a favour-,|

“And who knows what it will have been through before it ended up there. We need to provide a warm and welcoming environment.”

Sam’s eyebrows furrow. 

“What’s going on?” he asks tentatively, placing two beers down in front of Dean and Cas. Dean snatches his up, immediately taking a drink before replying.

“Castiel, here,” he says, putting far too much emphasis on the ex-angel’s name, “bought seventeen,” he holds up a finger as he pauses, “yes that’s right,  _ seventeen _ blankets. For a cat.” 

“I told you,” Cas says, his voice low, frustrated, “cats like to nest.”

“Yeah, but a cardboard box will do. They don’t need a gajillion blankets!”

“They like soft things,” Cas counteracts. “I did research.”

“Oh, you hear this guy?” Dean asks Sam. “He did  _ research _ .” 

“There’s no need to mock me, Dean,” Cas says, putting his hands on his hips. 

“There’s no need to buy  _ seventeen _ blankets, but you did that anyway.”   
“Guys,” Sam interjects, “can’t we just-”

“No,” they both snap immediately. They stare at each other for a few moments in one of those ‘who’s going to chicken out and look away first’ contests they’ve been having for the last ten years, this time laden with frustration. Sam thinks he can hear Dean’s teeth grinding from across the room. 

He shakes his head. These two are going to be the death of him, he swears. 

  
  


The next morning Sam wakes up feeling well-rested. After he’d left a bickering Dean and Cas to sort out their differences, he spent the rest of the night holed up in his room with a pizza binging  _ Gossip Girl _ , not that he’d ever admit that to anyone. 

Today they are picking up a cat from the shelter, and he wants nothing more than to go along with his brother and his boyfriend with them in a foul mood, but he knows that someone is going to have to play mediator so that things don’t get out of hand.

They don’t fight often, but when they do it can get nasty. Both of them know exactly what buttons to push, but Sam’s hoping that a stupid fight over some blankets doesn’t cause something serious. 

After Sam eats breakfast, he realises he hasn’t seen the other two all morning and he wonders what happened between the two of them last night, but he doesn’t get any answers and the drive to the shelter is quiet and tense. 

He sits in the passenger seat trying to ignore Dean’s heavy breathing and twitching fingers. He tried to suggest some music to calm their nerves - and tension - but much like the night before he was met with a steely “No.”

Sam is starting to wonder if it’s possible to warn a cat not to come home with them. 

But he would come to find that there’s no need. 

As soon as the three men enter the shelter everything between the two of them changes, Sam can feel the tension lifting like a filter has been lifted from his vision. 

He can see it in the way Dean holds a hand to Cas’s back as they talk to the woman behind the counter about all the cats they currently have and the way Cas says “My boyfriend thinks he’s funny,” placing a hand on Dean’s upper arm when he cracks a joke.

Sam thinks it’s fair to say that the shelter staff are all enamoured with Cas and Dean, and for all purposes, Sam could be invisible, but he catches the woman’s - Stacey’s - eye when Dean and Cas find a cat that they fall in love with. They smile softly at each other and her eyes sparkle. She’s cute. Maybe he’ll ask her to dinner sometime. 

The cat they choose is a year old and she was found by the side of the road a few weeks ago. She’s a grey colour and very small, already nuzzling into Cas.

“What breed is she?” Sam asks Stacey.

“We think she’s a Nebelung, her coat definitely indicates that and they’re known for being very shy but they love to play and these are all traits she’s shown.” Sam nods along as Stacey tells her more about the cat that Cas is now cradling. “She’s not usually very attentive towards new people,” Stacey says, “but once she gets to know you she’ll be very loyal.”

Dean smiles at that.

“She’ll fit right in,” he says, smiling down at the cat. “What’s her name, anyway?” 

“Her name is Grace,” Stacey tells them and Cas’s eyes go wide. 

“She’s perfect,” he whispers and leans down to kiss her tiny forehead. 

  
  


The drive back to the bunker is just as quiet as the drive to the shelter but is nowhere near as awkward. Before he even saw the car Dean had tossed the keys his way, and both Dean and Cas are currently sat in the back of the care, Grace in a crate between them. Sam can already tell that she’s going to be so spoilt, but he knows this is going to be good for the two of them. 

Sam knows Dean only agreed to get a cat to help Cas after he fell. He’s not as strong as he once was and finds constant hunting a struggle and he’s often left behind in the bunker alone and having Grace there to keep him company is going to be a massive help. Cas has Dean, he has Sam as a friend, but now he has something more. He has a companion. He has Grace. 

  
  


Back in the bunker, Sam makes dinner, much to Dean’s chagrin. Sam did offer to let Dean cook, but he couldn’t seem to leave Cas and Grace for long enough to get anything done. Instead, Sam chops onions and starts his work on their stir fry. He calls them to come and eat and Grace sits on a chair next to Cas the entire time, inseparable even after a few hours. 

Sam clears everything away and cleans the dishes and he doesn’t see the other two hunters for the rest of the day.

He decides to brave it and pop his head into Dean’s room to say goodnight and he’s relieved to find that he’s not walked in on anything indecent.

Cas is sitting on their bed, fully clothed, shoes abandoned on the floor next to where Dean is lying on his stomach, slowly stroking behind Grace’s ears.

She’s curled up, asleep, in the bed they bought for her yesterday, surrounded by many, many, many blankets.

“Everything okay?” Dean asks, not moving his eyes from the creature in front of him. 

“All good,” Sam replies, “just heading to bed.” Dean nods.

“Goodnight, Sam,” Cas says. 

“Night, Cas.” 

He closes the door with a smile on his face, and he turns to leave when he hears Cas speak.

“Seems like she likes her ‘gajillion’ blankets.” Sam can hear the finger quotes, even through the wall. 

“Yeah, yeah, alright,” Dean replies. “You were right.”

“Excuse me? Dean Winchester admitting that he was wrong?” 

Sam has to suppress a laugh.  _ Go on, Cas,  _ he thinks. 

“Now I never said that,” Dean says with a laugh.

“The sentiment was there.”

They’re quiet for a few moments and Sam finally turns to leave, but finally he hears Dean say “She’s pretty perfect, isn’t she?” 

“She’s wonderful,” Cas says, and Sam can’t help but agree. 

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!
> 
> Kudos are like kittens, comments are like puppies.


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